arrived with the diminished title of director-general, to suit the diminished area of his government. The military force, reduced to three hundred men, was put under command of Aubry, senior ranking captain.
English vessels were soon a familiar sight sailing up and down the river, to and from their new possessions, above Manchac, from which the French inhabitants moved with their slaves, inside the French lines, many of them to the capital. The Indians loyal to France followed them, occupying lands assigned to them by the government about the city and on the lakes.
The increase of wealth and population, and concentration of vitality in the city, produced there a sudden revival of activity of all kinds. New houses sprang up to answer the increased demand, new shops and magazines were opened along the levee, and coffee houses blossomed out from street corners. Deprived for so long a time of so many of the necessaries of life, the colonists, when occasion at last gratified them, could not content themselves with anything less than the luxuries of it. The English shrewdly profited by this epidemic of extravagance, and took advantage of the crippled condition to which they had reduced French commerce. Many of the vessels going up the river, ostensibly to carry supplies to the English possessions, were in reality floating shops, well supplied with goods of all kinds, and furnished inside with the regulation counters, shelves, and clerks. They stopped at a hail, and soon acquired the trade of the entire French coast, a trade which was all the more thriving as it was illicit. For the convenience of New Orleans customers, these contraband boats used to tie up at a tree on the river bank a short distance above the city. As Manchac was
